TORRE Zim­babwe, a lead­ing dis­trib­u­tor of earth­mov­ing, con­struc­tion and agri­cul­tural equip­ment, has opened a branch in Hwange town as it seeks to ex­pand its mar­ket and bring ma­chin­ery closer to the coal min­ing play­ers.

A sub­sidiary of Torre Equip­ment Africa which was formed in 2015 through a com­bi­na­tion of Torre’s cap­i­tal equip­ment busi­ness, Kanu Equip­ment with Trac­tor and Grader Sup­plies’ African busi­nesses, it has branches in Bu­l­awayo and Harare.

“We de­cided to open a branch this side be­cause it’s cost ef­fec­tive for our cus­tomers who from now on­wards don’t need to travel to ac­quire equip­ment.

“We started the com­pany in Zim­babwe after re­al­is­ing that the lo­cal in­dus­try was im­port­ing equip­ment and now we are say­ing ev­ery­thing is lo­cally avail­able as we want to pro­mote lo­cal in­dus­try,” said Mr Tavener at the official open­ing of the Hwange branch.

He said Torre Zim­babwe’s goal is to re­duce cus­tomers’ cost of do­ing busi­ness through pro­vi­sion of high qual­ity spares and equip­ment for earth mov­ing, con­struc­tion, min­ing and quar­ry­ing in­dus­tries.

“This is a can­did ges­ture of un­par­al­leled com­mit­ment and de­ter­mi­na­tion to re­lent­lessly pur­sue com­pany goals and im­mensely con­trib­ute to growth of our econ­omy,” he added.

The Hwange branch is in Num­ber 1, near Zimra of­fices.

Min­is­ter of State for Mata­bele­land North Prov­ince Cain Math­ema, who was guest of hon­our, chal­lenged in­dus­try play­ers to stop be­ing cry­ba­bies and tap into op­por­tu­ni­ties avail­able lo­cally.

“De­spite the bricks that the harsh eco­nomic en­vi­ron­ment is toss­ing, Torre Zim­babwe has used those bricks to build a branch, which will see the devel­op­ment and growth of Hwange and the econ­omy at large as well as cre­ate em­ploy­ment,” said Min­is­ter Math­ema.

He said Hwange is vastly en­dowed with unique re­sources such as coal, hence the great po­ten­tial for eco­nomic growth.

“Stop be­ing cry­ba­bies and tap onto lo­cal re­sources. The vis­i­bil­ity of Torre Zim­babwe shows they have faith in our econ­omy. We may be fac­ing chal­lenges but they are there to sup­port the econ­omy of Zim­babwe by pro­vid­ing equip­ment to the in­dus­try,” said Min­is­ter Math­ema.

“I im­plore all min­ing, quar­ry­ing and con­struc­tion com­pa­nies as well as lo­cal busi­ness peo­ple to re­cip­ro­cate Torre Zim­babwe’s ges­ture by fully sup­port­ing such busi­nesses in pur­suit of our buy Zim­babwe cam­paign.”